It's been AGES since we saw the Luciteam and only two days since they had that weird game changer in the hanger where Lucifer died and came back! So we're picking up almost exactly where we left off, and it's just as fun and saucy as before! Spoilers ahead for Lucifer (S0201) "Everything's Coming Up Lucifer"!
Lucifer and Amenadiel have been looking for their escaped mother, and coming up empty, though it does seem to mean they're accidentally stopping crimes in their usual time-stoppy / childish-humor co-style. They assume that she was in Hell for being bad, and therefore must be out for nefarious purposes. They also assume that since she has no physical body, she must have jumped into one that was recently vacated by it's original owner.
Cue the running gag of Lucifer calling all sorts of random people "Mum" and then being embarassed when it's not her and they're confused.
He gets distracted from this failure to find her by Chloe's new case: a body double for the star of a famous teen show is found dead on set with rebar shoved into her head to look like devil horns. Lucifer automatically thinks it's a message for him and that his mom is out to kill him, who was in charge of punishing her and never spoke up when she was cast out. Much to Chloe's endless annoyance, he thinks every clue is about him.
That case is moderately ordinary; the starlet has a secret drug problem, and her double was also her sober companion. She was meant to keep her clean, but they were both bad at the job. Turns out that it was the landlady all along! She was mad because she was previously the main drug dealer for the starlet, and she got replaced.
What's really fun is all the stuff that happens along the way.
Lucifer thinks that the starlet is secretly his mom, and when it becomes obvious that she's not but she's super ready to jump his bones anyway, it's doubly terrible for him--because he thought his mom was coming on to him, THEN he realized it was actually a teenage girl for real doing it--but it was so funny for us! Probably the only time Lucifer has ever been so flustered to have a girl throw herself at him! Whenever Lucifer isn't the suavest thing in the room, I'm a happy viewer.
They find the drugs in question and there's a devil emoji as the dealer mark, so Lucifer thinks it's another message. Even though the last one was a mistake. They track that to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting where a) Lucifer does his usual trampling all over everyone's feelings to get to the person they're looking for, but also b) he almost has an actual breakthrough of his own. See, earlier in the episode, Dr Linda asked him if their sessions are actually helping at all, or just giving him an excuse to ignore the conclusions she tries to lead him to. When he gets in the meeting and they ask what his lowest point was, he almost gets to where he realizes that he's been hard on his mom and wonders what she'd think of him, proving that he actually HAS been making progress in therapy, and that he's been learning how to do this self-honesty thing for real...
So of course that's when they find their guy, he isn't Mum either, and Lucifer loses the thread of that insight.
And when it gets to the part where they have to solve the crime, he and Chloe both come to the same conclusion of who it's got to be through their own different means in a nice scene where they're paralleled. Even when they're not working together, they belong as a team; heck, he even sat down at her desk and helped her sort through paperwork for half a second this episode. Lucifer doesn't need to be involved in the end, but he goes to figure it out anyway, because it's his job now; he's invested in solving these cases. Also, he's totally caught the feels.
His showdown with Bobbi-B, the landlady-drug-dealer-murderer was pretty hilarious, too. She kicks his booty big time, and we learn that Chloe's sphere of no-power-whammy is getting bigger; he doesn't even know she's come to the same conclusion and is getting near the house, and he loses his invulnerability before she even knocks on the door!
Meanwhile, lots of other stuff.
There's a new ME called Ella, which is great because every cop show needs a cool ME, and it adds a nice new level to the team. She's deeply faithful to her religion, but she's also cheerfully not judge-y about it; she has no problem with Lucifer claiming to be who he is, and when Chloe asks her if she thinks all this religious stuff is real, she gets excitedly philosophical. She also says that if it needs proof, it's not faith, which sticks with Chloe.
See, she's bothered that she saw Lucifer gut-shot and bleeding out, and then saw him walking around fine, and she can't explain it. Lucifer is annoyed that she STILL doesn't believe him, but she's closer than she's ever been--which is also why she's more suspicious than ever. She's got a sample of his blood and she's going to have it analyzed in the crime lab...but it's been two days and she still hasn't sent it in yet. After her talk with Ella, she throws it away instead.
But Amenadiel doesn't know that she won't actually do it, and he takes matters into his own hands, because they can't have proof of divinity running around in a cosmology based on faith. While Lucifer is taking his job seriously and / or dealing with Maze, Ama goes to convince Chloe that Lucifer is a con artist. He says the two of them were adopted, which is how they look so different; he uses a blood pack and a bulletproof vest to show her how he faked getting killed. He also says that they had a really bad childhood and that all of this is a self-defense construct to allow him to act even a little sane, and that he doesn't mean to lie to anyone but himself. Which is great, because Ama is a holier-then-thou pain, frequently, but he also loves his brother and doesn't want to defame him. And he's not trying to chase Chloe away, just make her stop asking certain important questions.
Chloe now has a perfectly reasonable excuse for everything that she's seen...and she doesn't buy it. She also doesn't buy it that he's crazy. Which really only leaves that he's telling the truth, but she's not ready to face that yet, and she settles for accepting him how he is because "You make me a better detective". There's also a whole thing about a joke with the punchline "I need the eggs".
Maze meanwhile, has been missing for the whole two days. Lucifer says he isn't worried and he blames Ama getting all emotional on her, but he's totally worried; he's just also still mad at her, and definitely still a child in dealing with stuff like that. As it turns out, that's fine, because she wants to find out who she is as an individual person. She comes back when Lucifer's life is in trouble--after someone comes at him with a knife--but she's not ready to step back into how things were. She is, however, forging what looks like a real friendship with Dr Linda!
Also, Amenadiel is losing his powers now. He tries to go steal the blood sample and gets caught because his time-trick wears off and he has to leave it, and then at the end, he tests it when no one is around and it does the same thing. Is it maybe NOT Chloe that's causing it for Lucifer, but something bigger? Or is it something else for Ama, a different way to lose your powers?
Also also, Dan is back on the force with no charges and a demotion, and he keeps sending sad looks at Chloe but she's still mad at him.
And then, right at the end, after they've given up trying to find their mother because obviously she's not actually out to kill them so they have no idea where she'll pop up, she shows up in Lucifer's loft on her own. In Tricia Helfer's body. Holding a bloody knife and asking for help before passing out in Luci's arms.
Plot!
It was a pretty great return to the show, and it's great to see that, so far, it's as irreverrent and saucy as it's always been. Fox doesn't have a great track record with, like, any show ever--the scant handful of shows they haven't canceled lately didn't go well in season two (cough - Sleepy Hollow - cough), so it was a little tentatively that I tuned in. But if it can keep up the way it is, deepening the story and the worldbuilding without going off the rails or compromising it's characters, it might be okay. This ep was fun and exciting, and didn't abandon any of the character growth that happened last season, so yay premier!
What did you guys think?
More notes on Lucifer 2.1 "Everything's Coming Up Lucifer":
